A Literary Chestnut: Dryden's “Cousin Swift”

It is hard to think of another brief quotation in English literary history so felicitous as the one attributed to John Dryden: “Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet.” Here in a single sentence the family relationship between two great writers is established; Dryden is placed as an incisive and prophetic judge of literary worth; Swift is dramatically provided with cause for turning away from his disappointing “Pindarics” to the remarkable prose connected with his name; his somewhat over-stressed “life-long” hatred for Dryden is given its impetus. And if Dryden may be considered representative of the end of the seventeenth century and Swift of the beginning of the eighteenth century in English letters, a whole new age of prose is conveniently suggested in the eight words Dryden is supposed to have uttered. Whether or not he really did utter exactly those words—and I am quite certain that he did not—makes no great difference now: it is too late to add qualifying phrases to all the biographies, critical essays, monographs, and literary histories in which Dryden's pronouncement may be read. It has assumed a quality of fictional truth that renders it more convincing and more “true” than demonstrably authentic pronouncements could be. It is like some of the equally quotable adjudications of Samuel Johnson, chestnuts from the same tree, which also seem too suspiciously apropos to have been casually voiced, though they may have been recorded verbatim. Indeed, the eight words under consideration sound much less like Dryden than like Dr. Johnson himself; but that is a matter I will refer to later on in this paper.